Proving out a Het?

[Raverthug]

I have 1.3 het albinos. I posted a thread about how everyone would breed out some snakes. Some one had mentioned the idea of breeding my het male to one of my het females to prove him out. My question is this. How does breeding 2 hets prove anything? If I come out with 1 albino theres no way to prove what one has the gene. Wouldnt you have to breed one to a normal or something not het for albino?

[rabernet]

I have 1.3 het albinos. I posted a thread about how everyone would breed out some snakes. Some one had mentioned the idea of breeding my het male to one of my het females to prove him out. My question is this. How does breeding 2 hets prove anything? If I come out with 1 albino theres no way to prove what one has the gene. Wouldnt you have to breed one to a normal or something not het for albino?

In order to display the homozygous form of Albino, the off spring have to get one copy of the albino gene from EACH parent. If you breed two hets together and you produce an albino - you've just proven BOTH of your hets to be 100% het albino, because if either one was NOT a het, you would not produce an albino.

Keep in mind though, if you don't produce an albino in your first breeding, that does not DIS-prove that either of them are het. You'd have to breed them a few more times to make sure that you weren't just missing the odds.

You might find this helpful to understanding recessive genetics a little better.

http://www.ballpython.ca/what_get/recessive.html

Here's where you can also see dominant and co-dominant examples as well.

http://www.ballpython.ca/genetics.html

[unspecified42]

A snake gets two genes for albino- one from each parent. In order to get an albino (or any other visual recessive trait like piebald or axanthic), the snake must get the recessive form of the gene from BOTH parents. So if you breed two snakes together and end up with an albino baby, you know for sure that both parents carry the gene.

[Raverthug]

well Ill be honist. that link made me more confused then before. Like why is it when you put two 100% hets together the clutch is only 66% just like if you get 2 Homozygous that sites says the whole clutch would be Homozygous

[unspecified42]

well Ill be honist. that link made me more confused then before. Like why is it when you put two 100% hets together the clutch is only 66% just like if you get 2 Homozygous that sites says the whole clutch would be Homozygous

Each snake has two genes for one allele, or trait.

"Homo" means "same." "Hetero" means "different."

Say we're talking about albinism. "A" will be wild-type/normal. "a" will be albino, which is recessive.

A homozygous animal will either be "AA" (total normal) or "aa" (albino). The got the same gene from each parent, and can ONLY pass on that gene.

So if you breed 2 homozygous animals- "aa" x "aa," 100% of the offspring will be albino. It's the only possible outcome.


However, if you have two heterozygous animals- "Aa" x "Aa," which would be two hets, you could get: AA, Aa, or aa.

So say we have a clutch of 4. 1 is albino, 1 is normal, 2 are hets (this isn't how it works, but for the sake of argument we'll say that's what we ended up with). It's obvious that the albino is "aa," otherwise it wouldn't be albino. However, you have 3 other snakes that look normal. Two are hets, but you don't know which two. So they call those normal-looking snakes "66% hets" because 66% (2/3) of them are heterozygous, but it's not guaranteed.

[rabernet]

well Ill be honist. that link made me more confused then before. Like why is it when you put two 100% hets together the clutch is only 66% just like if you get 2 Homozygous that sites says the whole clutch would be Homozygous

You get a visual when a baby inherits a copy of the gene from both parents, and therefore HAS to have 2 copies of the gene to express albinism.

When you pair two albino's together, they both have 2 copies of the gene to contribute to the offspring, therefore all their babies will get 2 copies of the gene (one from each parent).

When you pair two hets together (a het has ONE copy of the gene and ONE copy of the wild type (or normal) gene), the babies can either inherit:

Normal gene + albino gene = het albino (normal appearing)
Normal gene + Normal gene = Normal
Albino gene + albino gene = albino.

So, that's 25% chance of albino, 25% chance of normal, and 50% chance of hets.

Out of a four egg clutch, statisically, 1 of those would be albino, 1 would be normal, and 2 would be het albino.

Of the three normal APPEARING babies, 66% of them (2 out of 3) have a chance to be hets. So each baby has a 66% chance of being het albino statistically. That's why het to het normal appearing babies are called 66% possible hets.

[Raverthug]

Thank you rabernet. Thats the best any one has explained it to me

[Patrick Long]

Het x Het isnt always set %'s either






This is OBVIOUSLY NOT the 25% chance...